Following last week’s Bay Area homicide spree linked to Vallejo, local Filipino-American leaders and community members are reeling at what they view as a cultural anomaly.

And while the victims were not well known in Vallejo, those same leaders have been discussing ways to help their families.

A week after the bizarre case began to unfold, a man who occasionally played basketball with a central figure in the killing spree said he did not see the events coming.

“It’s shocking news, because, how can Efren (Valdemoro) do that?” said Ahlen Jorge. “I can’t say that we were friends, but we were acquaintances because we played basketball every Sunday.

“Although he’s kind of serious when he played basketball, he’s not hardheaded,” Jorge said. “We are so sad that it happened. We lost a … not a friend really, but an acquaintance. He was such a nice person, to us … he never did anything bad to us.”

While police have not definitively linked the deaths of two Vallejo Filipinas to Valdemoro, most recently of Hercules, the man is considered a suspect in those deaths, and in several other deaths outside Vallejo, police said.

Valdemoro, 38, is suspected of killing his girlfriend, Cindy Tran, 46, who worked as a hair stylist in Vallejo, and her tenant Ricardo Sales, 73, who worked as a bank security guard in Vallejo. Sales’s body was found in his Hercules home Aug. 27.

Valdemoro, who a week ago was shot and killed by police in Richmond following a freeway chase, was also an acquaintance of Vallejo residents Segundina “Rita” Allen and Macaria “Carol” Smart. The bodies of the two women were discovered in Allen’s house shortly after Valdemoro’s death. Sales’s 35-year-old son, Frederick, has been missing since Aug. 26.

Retired Vallejo priest Luis Resma said he has not heard of another Filipino killing more than one Filipino in his 30 years in this country.

Resma said the immediate cultural reaction is to pull members of the local Filipino community together, to pray for the victims and comfort their families.

Former Vallejo City Councilman and former Solano County Supervisor Larry Asera said victims of the recent homicides were not well-known in the larger Filipino community, and immediate local family members are scarce.

“I think there’s sort of a quiet talk, I think because of the shock part,” Asera said of the local Filipino reaction. “I don’t think the community fully understands. Part of us want to know if there’s anything we can do to help … but right here in our backyard, this kind of thing doesn’t happen.”

Rozanna Verder Aliga, a Solano County Board of Education member, met Monday with Tony Ubalde, a Filipino minister, Asera and community leader Eloise Scott to try to figure out “how we can help the families.”

“We’re, first of all, trying to figure out what happened and who to contact in terms of how we can help the family,” Verder Aliga said. “Any time there’s a victim of crime, of course, that’s something that we can empathize with. … That’s a very sad tragic incident and we’re here to support each other and reassure the community that this is unfortunate.”

A memorial service for Allen and Smart is scheduled for 2-4 p.m. Sept. 16 at the Filipino Community Center, 820 Sonoma Blvd.

Allen’s family in the Philippines is seeking the return of the woman’s remains, though those efforts are blocked without the permission of her husband, Charles Rittenhouse, said Fred Santos with the Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco.

Rittenhouse charged in connection with possession of explosives police discovered in his home at the same time they found the two women. Police say he is also considered a suspect in Allen’s and Smart’s deaths, although he has not been charged in their deaths.